


Ashes, Ashes

by HugeAlienPie



Series: Deweyverse [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, First Meetings, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, The Hale Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 16:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3535694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HugeAlienPie/pseuds/HugeAlienPie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The pink-haired punk phoenix who likes to watch the world burn meets the grieving werewolves whose world went up in flames. It's great first impressions all 'round.</p><p>A timestamp in the Deweyverse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes, Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> The first of (probably) several timestamps in the Deweyverse, this one beginning less than a month after the Hale fire. Unbetaed.
> 
>  **Trigger Warning:** there's just plain lots of fire in this one, and a character has strong reactions to that. Let me know if I need to add a warning for anything else.

**_May 27, 2005_ **

Uncle Peter (may he rot in Hell) used to say that hopelessness had a scent unlike any other emotion, but Laura had never smelled it until they came into this building. They've been here three days and two nights, and they're still being bombarded with the scents of stale human waste, greasy food and acrid drugs, mold and decay. But there's this other smell, too, indescribable even by simile, so sharp and oozing that Laura has to breathe through her mouth to avoid wanting to vomit on every inhale. She thinks that may be hopelessness. Derek and Cora seem affected but not _this_ affected, so the alpha powers must be enhancing her sense of it. God, she wishes Mom were here to tell her this shit. She still needs to learn _so much_.

"I hate this place," Cora announces for the hundredth time. Derek doesn't roll his eyes, so he must feel the same way.

Laura's at her side instantly, arms around her bony shoulders, holding her close. "I know, Cora," she says in a poor imitation of Mom's alpha voice—and her mom voice. "I don't like it, either. It's just for a few more days, until we have access to our money and can get a real place. Okay?"

There'd been, strictly speaking, no real reason for them to come to New York. Kate's dead, so no one's coming after them. Peter's dead, so there's no one to punish. _Their entire family is dead_ — Laura pulls sharply back from that abyss. She has to hold it together. For her pack. As the last living members of the Beacon Hills branch of the Hale pack, they should've stayed to protect the territory. But they'd needed to get _away_ from Beacon Hills, where the smells of burnt timber and burning flesh waft on every breeze. Mike, their parents' financial advisor, moved to Brooklyn two years ago, and when Laura called him to explain the situation, he'd said, in a voice heavy with grief, "This conversation would best be carried out in person, if you can make it." They'd leapt at the excuse.

They know a couple people in New York, and Mom's supernatural network would jump to their aid the instant they asked. But Mom's contact list is in her office in Beacon Hills in a safe they can't open, and none of the people they know here have enough room for all three of them, and they are _adamant_ about staying together.

So they're here, in a Bed-Stuy brownstone abandoned mid-gentrification, with the clothes they'd been wearing and the money that'd been in their pockets the night of the fire. Cora'd had her backpack with her, so she has a few incidentals, and they stopped at a drug store in Nevada to pick up toothbrushes and deodorant, but generally speaking, "meager" is too generous a word to describe their possessions. Until Mike tells them how to access the family accounts, they'll have to make do with squatting.

There's a great rush of air, like enormous wings beating ( _like fire rushing through a building_ ), and a familiar sense of another supernatural being in the area. Laura and Derek exchange worried glances and then position themselves around Cora, Laura facing the door, Derek the window, prepared for attack from either direction.

The attack . . . isn't quite what Laura had anticipated. After a couple minutes of waiting, a guy walks up the stairs and into the room. He's Derek's age, white, with startling green eyes and a bright pink buzz cut. He's dressed entirely in black, the heavy canvas of his jacket and the denim of his jeans bristling with safety pins and rivets and covered with anarchy-related patches. He has more piercings than her eyes can catalogue. He smells like magic, like something burnt that makes her want to snap and snarl in fear, and like . . . feathers?

The guy struts into the room like the cock of the walk. Derek comes to stand beside Laura, dropping into a low defensive crouch. The guy smirks and cocks his head, studying them. "Awww," he coos disdainfully, "isn't this _sweet_? A wittle famwy of wolfies." His eyes harden in a flash, and his voice turns cold. "Run away, wittle wolfies. This is _my_ shithole."

Laura stands and flashes her eyes at him. "I don't see anything saying it's yours. I don't see anything that belongs to you." She closes her eyes for a second, breathing deep. "I don't even _smell you_."

The guy slinks forward, hands balled into fists at his side. He gets into Laura's space, and it's a lover's purr with an undertone of threat when he says, "Getting personal, aren't you, Alpha? _Sniffing_ a man's space uninvited?"

Now that the guy's this close, Laura picks up other details about him. His hair and clothes scream "punk or die," but his clothes have been cleaned recently, he smells like it's been no more than a day or two since he's had a long, hot shower, and the dye job on his hair is flawless. Professional. Laura lets her the glow fade from her eyes and snorts. "Leave him," she tells Derek dismissively. "He's a wannabe. Not worth our time."

The guy whirls on her, snarling with uncontrolled rage, face inches from hers. "Take it _back_ ," he hisses.

"Or what?" Laura asks. "You'll tattle to Mommy?" The guy's fury is building, and her rage answers. This absolute _fuck_ probably has _everything_ —a family that loves him, a warm, laughter-filled house to sleep in, an anchor in this fucked up world—and he's throwing it away to play at punk. Pissing on happiness so he can _pretend_ to suffer. "What'll Mommy do, wannabe?" she says, voice low and biting. "Will she give you another safety pin from her sewing box and tell you you're still her favorite little punk-man?"

Letting out a shriek both higher and louder than Laura would've expected given his size, the wannabe spins, and his beta shift takes him over. It's not what she'd expected. His head is long and pointed, like a bird's, though still recognizably human. His eyes glow orange, and his hair lies flat against his head like feathers. When he lifts his hands, she thinks they may be in real trouble, because those are _talons_ , long and curved and deadly.

Laura roars, the beta shift taking hold, and as she hears Derek beside her, ready to catch up, she realizes she's been looking for this ever since the fire. For someone to fight. For some reason to unleash all the energy and aggression that came to her with the alpha powers. Kate and Peter died before she could use that energy on them, and ever since then she's been holding it in, exerting every ounce of her control to keep even a drop of it from falling onto Derek and Cora.

The fight will be over quickly. With Laura at near Berserker-level rage and Cora shifted and ready behind them (Laura and Derek would prefer to keep her out of it, but even at 11 she's one of the pack's best fighters. Oh, shit—now she's _the_ best fighter), this guy doesn't stand a chance, no matter what he is.

For a few minutes, the fight is about what Laura expects. They posture and size each other up, then circle and feint. The wannabe attacks in little hops and jabs, like he's used to being above his opponents. Laura's getting a couple ideas about what the guy might be, and she doesn't like any of them.

Cora gets in close and rakes the guy's arm with her fangs. The guy shrieks and draws back his arm. When he extends it, a ball of fire is spitting in his hand.

Every muscle in Laura's body seizes up. This guy ( _phoenix_ ) is about to hurl a fireball at her, and she's literally immobilized, can't do a thing to defend herself.

Derek roars. It's not as loud or intimidating as an alpha roar, but it's enough to startle the phoenix, to draw his attention from Laura for the split-second it takes Cora to rush him and shove him away from her, hard.

Derek and Cora keep their eyes glowing and their fangs bared while they hustle their unyielding—un _anything_ —sister out of the room. Laura watches the whole thing unfold from outside herself. The phoenix huddles near the door, green eyes wide as he watches, and when Laura's arm brushes his on their way out of the room, he doesn't smell like triumph. He smells like fear.

* * *

**_May 27 – September 15, 2005_ **

They find a new place. It's one of four run-down apartments sitting empty above a shuttered bakery. Everything smells like flour and warm sugar.

Laura meets with Mike and discovers that, far from the "modest savings" their parents talked about, they've inherited a small fortune—and that's before factoring in the life insurance payments they'll be collecting. Most of it's in trust until they turn 25, but in the meantime there's a more than generous allowance.

Their allowance is enough to coast on, but Laura signs up with a couple temp agencies anyway, and by the end of June she has a reputation for being eager to accept the weirdest jobs anyone has to offer: third-shift transcriptionist for a large-animal vet; trade show demonstration assistant (a.k.a. "the girl who points at things") for a home remodeling firm; mascot for a local minor league baseball team (she doesn't last long at that job. The smells inside the costume keep making her have to run off the diamond to throw up).

Derek talks about getting a job, too, but Laura tells him that watching Cora is his job. He throws himself into it with fervor. He's probably desperate for anything to do that isn't thinking about their family being dead. He and Cora spend a lot of time at the library. Most days, he says, they're the only white people in the place. He says it's nice to be stared at for a reason other than everyone knowing they're "those poor Hale kids whose family died in that awful fire."

Laura starts looking at colleges in New York. Not for this fall, but for the spring term, or next year. She talks to Whittier about transferring credits. She tells herself that making new plans for her future isn't a betrayal of the ones she made before the fire or the people she made them with who can never make another new plan. Some days, she believes it.

By the time September rolls around, with a new school year in a new school for Derek and Cora, they're well settled into their crappy apartment. They could easily afford something better, but now this place smells like them, like home. So they buy the building and start making stabs at renovating the apartments. They're almost . . . living again.

* * *

**_September 16, 2005_ **

When Laura comes home from work the Friday of the first week of school, she catches a smell around the front door, fire and feathers and magic. Inside, Derek's more taciturn than normal, and he sticks to her side all evening, like a stone guardian sworn to protect her and never speak. She ruffles his hair a lot, because he claims to hate it but not-secretly loves it.

She waits until he's engrossed in his homework (after his weekly argument with Cora about whether "only losers do homework on Friday night") before she leans over the back of the couch where he's working and asks, "Was that phoenix hanging around today?"

"Yeah," he says, too wrapped up in his translation of _Don Quijote_ or whatever the crap he's working on to realize what they're talking about. "He says his name's _Jordan_." He rolls his eyes, and Laura doesn't ask what's wrong with that name.

"Hmm," she says. "What did he want?"

Derek shrugs and scribbles in his notes. God, he's such a nerd, and she loves him so much. "He claimed he was worried about you. Because of the fight." Laura flushes both hot with embarrassment and cold with fear at the reminder of what happened in the brownstone. Derek must pick up a change in her heartbeat or scent, because his head snaps up, and his gaze is wide and panicked. "I'm sorry!" he says. "I swear, Laura, I didn't tell him anything about you or the fire or anything."

She kisses his head and squeezes his shoulder. "I know you didn't. But you could, if you wanted."

He grumbles half-heartedly and goes back to his homework. Laura lets it drop.

* * *

**_September 24, 2005_ **

They get a cold snap the next week, the first real hint of fall. Mid-morning that Saturday, Laura glances outside while she works in the bakery's kitchen, which she's converted into an office of sorts, and catches a glimpse of some asshole standing around in black jeans and a black t-shirt among a sea of sweaters and jackets. She looks again and realizes it's a specific pink-haired asshole in black jeans and a black t-shirt. She snorts. The kid (Jordan? Is that what Derek said?) might as well have a "Supernatural Creature Here" sign above his head in blinking neon.

Laura watches and waits. If Jordan approaches the door, she'll let him in. But he hovers on the sidewalk, looking indecisive. Laura wishes she had access to Uncle Peter's bestiary (half of which he cribbed from the Argent bestiary, but once you filter out the blatant xenophobia and speciesism, it has a lot of good information) to learn what kind of enhanced senses phoenixes have. Does he know she's in here? Maybe he's here for Derek and can tell he's not home.

Half an hour later, Derek comes home from the rec center, sweaty and overheated from his basketball game like always, _gross_. As he comes up the sidewalk and catches Jordan's scent, his posture stiffens and his scent sours with anger. Jordan steps forward, hands up in an "I come in peace" gesture. Derek scowls and tries to shove around him. Laura lurks in a corner of the bakery's front retail space

"Hey," Jordan says. "I just want to make sure she's all right."

"Aren't you brave?" Derek says with a sneer. He moves under the ratty awning over the bakery's front door, out of the path of traffic, and Jordan moves with him. "Standing on a sidewalk in Bed-Stuy, where anyone could see you. Attack you."

Derek feints a lunge, and Jordan flinches back. "I can protect myself," he says petulantly.

"You gonna whip up a fireball in the middle of Chauncey Street?"

"I could," Jordan says, and Laura has to give him credit for refusing to be cowed. "Besides, what makes you think I don't live in this neighborhood?" He says it like he doesn't realize the answer's in the fact that he asked the question in the first place.

"You don't smell like this neighborhood, dumbass," Derek hisses back, low and fierce.

"Oh," Jordan says, quiet and surprised. "I came to apologize. But I'll settle for you telling me how she's doing."

"How do you _think_ she's doing?" Derek snaps.

"I don't _know_ , because you won't tell me."

"You could knock on the door and ask her," Derek says, clearly out of patience.

Jordan brightens. "Can I? I wasn't sure if—most werewolves are super territorial—"

Derek's eyebrows go up. "And you're not?"

"No, I'm not—I mean, not _instinctually_. Just . . . that was my spot. That I found. I was proud of it."

Laura has no idea who this kid is, but he's kind of an idiot. It's cute.

"Well, you're right," Derek says. "We _are_ territorial. And this is our territory. Fly home, little bird. Back to Park Slope or wherever."

Jordan's eyes widen. "You can smell that? I smell like Park Slope? Shit, I smell like Park Slope, don't I?"

Derek rolls his eyes, and when Laura snickers, he bites back a smile. "Get. Lost," he says with more than his usual growl. Jordan studies him, head tilted to one side ( _like a bird_ ), and she thinks he might be able to hear the laugh Derek's trying to hide.

Jordan leaves as ordered. Laura doubts they've seen the last of him.

* * *

"You know," Laura says, later that day after Derek's showered and is fit company for werewolf noses again, "it's okay if you're into him."

Derek drops the can of coconut milk in his hand; it rolls halfway under the refrigerator. "What? Who?"

Laura waves her hand. "Jordan."

"I am _not_ interested in _Jordan_." His heartbeat speeds up, but she doesn't think he's lying, exactly.

"Are you sure? It's okay if you are." Derek hasn't dated since Paige died, but in the last few weeks she's noticed him _looking_ again. And she's noticed that he looks at guys about as often as he looks at girls. He's 16 and a half; this is prime sexual experimentation time.

"I'm _not_ ," Derek says, and this time his heart stays steady. So he's not interested in Jordan, but maybe some other guy's caught his eye, and he's worried about how she'll react. That hurts. "Anyway," he continues, and she almost misses it in her daydreams of how to make sure he knows she supports this phase he's going through, "I'm pretty sure he's way more into you."

" _What_?" Laura shrieks.

* * *

**_September 25, 2005_ **

Jordan comes back the next day and bangs on the bakery's front door. Cora tromps down the stairs and opens the door, giving Jordan her best unimpressed glare. It's a _very_ good unimpressed glare.

"Hi, there, little lady," Jordan says, clearly missing the part where Cora's 11, not _four_. "My name is Jordan. What's yours?"

Cora crosses her arms and glares harder. Laura watches from the shadows at the top of the stairs and tries not to laugh.

"Is your sister home?"

"What's it to you?" Cora asks.

Jordan whips a bunch of red and white roses from behind his back. "I brought her Fire and Ice roses." He passes his hand over the blooms, and they burst into flame. "With real fire!"

Laura's vision reduces to a pinprick tunnel that locks in on the flames and can't be turned on anything else, no matter how hard she tries. She's dimly aware of a loud noise, as Derek barrels past her down the stairs, shifted and roaring at Jordan. She's dimly aware of Cora and Derek shoving Jordan away from the door, hard, and slamming it shut behind them. She sinks onto the stair and closes her eyes. Then she opens them again. Closed or open, she sees those dancing flames.

"Are you _brain-damaged_?" Derek demands. She hears it faintly, as though the conversation is happening at the farthest edge of her hearing range, rather than right outside her door.

"What?" Jordan squeaks. His voice is high-pitched and thready, like he's struggling for air. Maybe because an enraged teenaged werewolf has a hand around his throat.

"Are. You. Brain. Damaged?" Derek repeats. "Do you have a brain injury or disease that makes you legitimately unable to _think_? Or are you just a thoughtless _ass_?"

"They're flowers!" Jordan protests. "Who doesn't like flowers?"

"Flowers you _set on fire_!" Cora says. "You brought our sister 'Sorry my ball of fire freaked you out' flowers, and you _turned them into a ball of fire._ "

"Oh," Jordan says, and his consternation is so _sincere_ that Laura giggles. He waves a hand over the flowers, and the flames extinguish. Laura's vision widens again. "Oh, I'll . . . um . . ."

"Leave the flowers," Derek says gruffly.

"Oh, I—what?"

"She loves roses," he says. "Since they're not burning anymore, I'll give them to her." Laura wonders how Jordan managed to make the roses burn without burning up. She's _got_ to learn about phoenix magic if this kid's going to keep hanging around.

"Thank you!" Jordan says. The door opens. Derek comes inside immediately, but Cora stays where she is.

"They'll be mad at me for telling you," she says, "but should know. Our family died in a fire. We're the only ones left. It was less than six months ago."

Even from up here, Laura smells the wave of shock, pity, and guilt that billows off of Jordan. "Wh-why are you telling me this?" he chokes out.

Laura swears she can _hear_ the sharpness of Cora's grin as she says, "So you know how badly you messed up." She comes inside and slams the door in his face.

Laura puts the roses in one of the pint glasses they picked up at Goodwill and sets them by the sink.

* * *

**_September 26 - October 7, 2005_ **

Life stays the same; life changes.

Laura keeps taking weird temp jobs and talking to the admissions and financial aid departments at Whittier and CCNY.

She gets the three of them into therapy, individually and as a pack. The therapist's an elf, and Cora grumbles the whole way there about how unfair it is to make them see a therapist who can't be lied to ("You can't lie to us," Derek points out. "No," Cora retorts, "I _can_ lie to you; you'll just be able to hear if I do."), but after she comes out of her first session looking like she's shed all the tears she's been holding back since the fire, she stops complaining (she also gives herself a bowl cut. It's the most hideous haircut Laura's ever seen, but she understands Cora's need to control any aspect of her life she can).

Derek gets obsessive about the state of the apartment. He borrows Laura's credit card and buys second-hand chairs, blankets to throw over the back of the couch, actual art for the walls. He starts bringing around a tall, gangly classmate named Sean, born human in a leipreachán family. They shove and roughhouse like all teenagers, but Laura notices the shy way they smile at each other and how they're always brushing against each other. Derek's heartbeat is always elevated when Sean's around, and they both smell happy and nervous. Setting aside the obvious physical differences, Sean reminds her of Paige: smart, fierce, funny, and talkative. Baby bro's got a _type_.

Life changes; life stays the same.

* * *

**_October 10, 2005_ **

Jordan's been standing in front of the bakery's shuttered front door for ten minutes. Laura's been timing him. He appears to be giving himself a pep talk, though she can't tell, from the bits and pieces she hears, what he's pepping himself up _for_. Part of her wants to yank the door open and yell "Boo!" but his heart's pounding at an alarming rate, and she worries he'll set himself on fire if anything more alarming happens to him.

Finally pepped, Jordan bangs on the door. Laura debates. She's alone in the bakery, working in blissful, sibling-free silence on scholarship searches. If she doesn't go to the door, Jordan will go away eventually.

And yet . . . there's something endearing and stupid about this kid. About the way his desire to be angry keeps butting up against the fact that he has nothing to be angry _about._ About a bouquet of apology roses ringed with flame and a fight that ended with the aggressor staying assiduously out of the way of an opponent he could have _devastated_. He's bad when he tries to be good and good when he tries to be bad, and Laura enjoys that fact probably more than she should.

From the way he startles, she's the last person he expected to open the door. "Oh! Uh. Hi," he babbles.

"Hey," she says, leaning against the doorframe.

"Here." He thrusts a plastic bag at her. It radiates cold and smells like damp cardboard. She takes it and peers inside, eyebrow raised. "It's popsicles," he says, like she can't see that herself. "And ice cream and iced tea and . . . and everything I could think of that's . . . unfiery."

Warmth blooms in Laura's chest that Jordan would do this. That he _keeps_ doing this, coming back to try to apologize, to make sure she's okay. She takes another, longer assessment of him. He's ripped under that tight black t-shirt, and his black jeans show off a pair of very nice legs. Even the pink hair looks surprisingly good with the piercing green of his eyes. And under the fire-feather-magic smell that Laura suspects is a general phoenix thing, he smells like brown sugar and hyssop, and Laura likes it. A lot. "You didn't have to do this," she said.

"I know," he says. "But I messed up, and then I messed up my apology even more, and then your sister told me about the fire, and I—" He looks down at his hands like he doesn't understand them. "I don't burn. I can't. Phoenix thing, you know? And I can—I've forgotten, I guess. That not everyone's like that."

"No," Laura says tightly, "we definitely are not." But she feels . . . looser inside. It's the stupidest thing, and it won't bring back her family, but she finds something strangely comforting in the thought that there are people in the world who the fire couldn’t have touched.

"You want to come in?" she asks, and then she wonders which of them looks more startled.

"No, I, uh—I mean, I _want_ , but I should—I need to get home. My mom—"

Laura's eyes widen. Jordan is _Derek's age._ She shouldn't be caring about his muscles or his eyes or his scent. He's a kid, and she's the alpha of a tiny, struggling pack. She's got more important things to focus on. "Yeah," she says, forcing a hardness into her voice that she doesn't feel. She rattles the grocery bag at him. "Thanks for this, by the way."

"You're welcome," he says, and his smile makes her feel _giddy,_ and she remembers with a start that she's only 19, herself. Most days she gets so wrapped up in being alpha and primary breadwinner that she forgets she's actually a teenager. "Bye!" He turns from the door and starts walking quickly up the sidewalk.

"See ya 'round, Park Slope!" she calls after him.

Jordan turns and walks backward for a couple steps. " _Please_ don't call me that," he begs.  "My name is Jordan." He waves and turns back around.

Laura's read up on phoenix senses. Which is how she knows Jordan will hear her when she waits until he's reached the end of the block and turned the corner before she whispers, "Mine's Laura."

**Author's Note:**

> [tumbldown](http://hugealienpie.tumblr.com)


End file.
